Vietnamese cuisine encompasses the foods and beverages of Vietnam. Meals feature a combination of five fundamental tastes : sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy. The distinctive nature of each dish reflects one or more elements, which are also based around a five-pronged philosophy. Vietnamese recipes use ingredients like lemongrass, ginger, mint, Vietnamese mint, long coriander, Saigon cinnamon, bird's eye chili, lime, and Thai basil leaves. Traditional Vietnamese cooking has often been characterised as using fresh ingredients, not using much dairy or oil, having interesting textures, and making use of herbs and vegetables. The cuisine is also low in sugar and is almost always naturally gluten-free, as many of the dishes are rice-based instead of wheat-based, made with rice noodles, papers and flour. Vietnamese cuisine is strongly influenced not only by the cuisines of neighboring China, Cambodia and Laos, but also by French cuisine due to French colonial rule over the region from 1887 to 1954.
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Pho is a Vietnamese soup dish consisting of broth, rice noodles, herbs, and meat. Phở is a popular food in Vietnam where it is served in households, street-stalls, and restaurants country-wide. Residents of the city of Nam Định were the first to create Vietnamese traditional phở. It is considered Vietnam's national dish.
In Vietnamese cuisine, bánh mì or banh mi is a short baguette with thin, crisp crust and a soft, airy texture. It is often split lengthwise and filled with meat and savory ingredients like a submarine sandwich and served as a meal, called bánh mì thịt. Plain bánh mì is also eaten as a staple food.
Rice vermicelli is a thin form of noodle. It is sometimes referred to as "rice noodles" or "rice sticks", but should not be confused with cellophane noodles, a different Asian type of vermicelli made from mung bean starch or rice starch rather than rice grains themselves.
Gỏi cuốn, or nem cuốn, salad roll, summer roll, fresh spring roll, spring roll, rice paper roll, is a Vietnamese dish traditionally consisting of pork, prawn, vegetables, bún, and other ingredients wrapped in bánh tráng. Unlike other spring roll dishes, which are believed to originate from China, Vietnamese gỏi cuốn is a national creation using bánh tráng.
Bánh tráng or bánh đa nem, a Vietnamese term, sometimes called rice paper wrappers, rice crepes, rice wafers or nem wrappers, are edible Vietnamese wrappers used in Vietnamese cuisine, primarily in finger foods and appetizers such as Vietnamese nem dishes. The term rice paper wrappers can sometimes be a misnomer, as some banh trang wrappers are made from rice flour supplemented with tapioca flour or sometimes replaced completely with tapioca starch. The roasted version is bánh tráng nướng.
Rice noodles, or simply rice noodle, are noodles made with rice flour and water as the principal ingredients. Sometimes ingredients such as tapioca or corn starch are added in order to improve the transparency or increase the gelatinous and chewy texture of the noodles. Rice noodles are most common in the cuisines of China, India and Southeast Asia. They are available fresh, frozen, or dried, in various shapes, thicknesses and textures. Fresh noodles are also highly perishable; their shelf life may be just several days.
Nước chấm is a common name for a variety of Vietnamese "dipping sauces" that are served quite frequently as condiments. It is commonly a sweet, sour, salty, savoury and/or spicy sauce.
Bánh canh are a thick Vietnamese noodles that can be made from tapioca flour or a mixture of rice and tapioca flour. "Cake" refers to the thick sheet of uncooked dough from which the noodles are cut.
Vietnamese cuisine includes many types of noodles. They come in different colors and textures and can be served wet or dry, hot or cold, and fresh (tươi), dried (khô), or fried.
In Vietnamese, the term bánh translates loosely as "cake" or "bread", but refers to a wide variety of prepared foods that can easily be eaten by hands or chopsticks. With the addition of qualifying adjectives, bánh refers to a wide variety of sweet or savory, distinct cakes, buns, pastries, sandwiches, and other food items, which may be cooked by steaming, baking, frying, deep-frying, or boiling. Foods made from wheat flour or rice flour are generally called bánh, but the term may also refer to certain varieties of noodle and fish cake dishes, such as bánh canh and bánh hỏi.
Tương is the name applied to a variety of condiments, a kind of fermented bean paste made from soybean and commonly used in Vietnamese cuisine.
Nem refers to various dishes in Vietnamese, depending on the locality.
Món cuốn refer to Vietnamese roll and wrap dishes which include a variety of ingredients rolled in bánh tráng or vegetable leaf; it may include vegetable and herb leaves, or other kinds of vegetable. The range of possible ingredients allows people to select only what they want, according to their taste. The dish is always served with a dipping sauce called nước chấm.
Bánh hỏi (Vietnamese:[ɓaɲhɔːj] is a Vietnamese dish consisting of rice vermicelli woven into intricate bundles and often topped with chopped scallions or garlic chives sauteed in oil, served with a complementary meat dish. The strings of noodles are usually only as thin as a toothpick; the texture is firm enough so the noodles do not fall apart but is not at all sticky to keep the dish light.
Bún chả is a Vietnamese dish of grilled pork and noodles, which is thought to have originated from Hanoi, Vietnam. Bún chả is served with grilled fatty pork (chả) over a plate of white rice noodles (bún) and herbs with a side dish of dipping sauce. The dish was described in 1959 by Vietnamese food writer Vu Bang (1913–1984), who described Hanoi as a town "transfixed by bún chả." Hanoi's first bún chả restaurant was on Gia Ngư, Hoàn Kiếm District, in Hanoi's Old Quarter.
Bún thịt nướng, which originated from Southern Vietnam, is a popular Vietnamese dish of cold rice vermicelli topped with grilled pork, fresh herbs like basil and mint, fresh salad, giá, and chả giò. The dish is dressed in nước mam fish sauce. The dish is topped with roasted peanuts, Vietnamese pickled carrots, nem nướng̣ or grilled prawns. Bún thịt nướng is popular in all regions of Vietnam, alongside Hanoi's bún chả.
Chả giò, or nem rán, also known as fried spring roll, is a popular dish in Vietnamese cuisine and usually served as an appetizer in Europe, North America & Australia, where there are large Vietnamese diaspora. It is ground meat, usually pork, wrapped in rice paper and deep-fried.
Nem nướng is Vietnamese grilled pork sausage or grilled meatballs, and a popular Vietnamese food item, sometimes served as an individual appetizer or snack, or served with rice noodles or rice as a main course. Nem nướng is a specialty of Khánh Hòa Province . Nem nướng is a rustic dish, originating from Ninh Hoa, a northern district of Khanh Hoa province, about 30 km from the coastal city.
